WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- Sen. John McCain, the Republican standard-bearer in the U.S. presidential election contest, has claimed the "surge" policy is working and consequently the United States is winning the war in Iraq.
In his first assertion, however, McCain, R-Ariz., is claiming credit where credit is not due. In his second, that U.S. forces are winning in Iraq, he fails to understand what "winning" means in a Fourth Generation conflict.
The current reduction in violence in Iraq does not mean that U.S. forces are winning. Nor does al-Qaida's incipient defeat mean the United States is winning. The United States wins only if a state re-emerges, the state the United States and its armed forces destroyed by its invasion of Iraq in March 2003. A reduction in violence and the defeat of al-Qaida are necessary preconditions for the re-emergence of a state, but they are not sufficient to ensure it.
A state will be re-established in Iraq only if and when authority comes from a person's position in the state hierarchy, e.g., governor, minister, mayor, army or police commander, functionary, etc. Services also must come from the state. At present, as best as I can determine, this is happening seldom. If at all.
Rather, authority derives from non-state bases such as relationship to a tribe, clan or militia, and services are provided by the U.S. military, non-government organizations and Iraqi militias or religious organizations. An Iraqi who holds a nominal state office may have authority, but his authority is not a product of his state office. A local Iraqi government may provide some services, but the government in Baghdad is seldom the source of the resources or authority to provide those services.
In fact, the relative peace now prevailing in Iraq is largely the product of deals the U.S. military has made with real non-state Iraqi authority figures. These deals were both necessary and prudent, but they represent de facto acceptance of the reality that there is no state.
So McCain is wrong on both counts. The fact that a presidential candidate is fundamentally wrong on so important a subject as the war in Iraq is disturbing. More disturbing is the nature of the errors.
Both represent carryovers of Bush administration practices. The first, stating the surge is the cause of reduced violence, represents the Bush White House's cynical practice of assuming the American people are too stupid to understand anything even slightly complex.
The second, claiming we are winning the Iraq war, represents President George W. Bush's policy of making statements that are blatantly at odds with reality and figuring that if the truth catches up with them, it will do so too late to alter the course of events. It was the latter practice that got the United States into the Iraq war in the first place.
Together, the twin pillars of McCain's Iraq assessment, both built of sand, give substance to the Democrats' charge that a McCain presidency would represent a third term for Bush. They also raise the question of whether they are honest mistakes or, like the arguments the Bush White House used to sell the Iraq conflict, simply lies. One would hate to think McCain's "straight talk" comes from a forked tongue, but the parallels with Bush administration practices are too obvious to overlook.
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(William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.)
